Factory Courts

Written:Written at the end of 1899Published:First published in 1924 in the magazineProletarskaya Revolyutsiya, No. 8-9.

      Published according to a manuscript copied by an unknown hand.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1964,

      Moscow,Volume 4,

      pages297-309.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

Factorycourts is the name given to courts consisting of elected
      representatives of workers and employers (factory owners in the case of
      industry) that examine cases and disputes arising in connection with the
      terms of hire, with the fixing of rates of pay for ordinary work and
      overtime, with the discharge of workers in violation of rules, with
      payments for damage to material, with unfair imposition of fines, etc.,
      etc. Courts of this kind exist in the majority of the West-European
      countries, but not in Russia, and we propose to examine what advantages
      they bring the workers and why the institution of factory courts is
      desirable in addition to the ordinary courts, where cases are heard by a
      sole judge appointed by the government or elected by the propertied
      classes, with no elected representatives of the employers and the workers.

Thefirst advantage of the factory court is that it is much more
      accessible to the workers. To present a petition to an ordinary court, one
      has to submit it in writing (which often requires the employment of a
      solicitor); stamp duty has to be paid; there are long waiting periods; the
      plaintiff has to appear in court, which takes him and the witnesses away
      from their work; then comes a further period of waiting until the case
      goes to a higher court to be retried after an appeal by dissatisfied
      litigants. Is it any wonder that workers do not willingly resort to the
      ordinary courts? Factory courts, on the contrary, consist of employers and
      workers elected as judges. It is not at all difficult for a worker to make
      a verbal complaint to one of his fellow workers whom he has himself
      elected. Sessions of factory courts are usuallyheld on holidays or, in general, at times when the workers are free and do
      not have to interrupt their work. Cases are handled much more
      expeditiously by factory courts.

Thesecond advantage that the workers gain from factory courts is that the
      judges have a far better understanding of factory affairs and,
      furthermore, are not outside officials but local people who have a
      knowledge of the workers’ living conditions and local industrial
      conditions; half of them are workers, who will always be just to a worker
      and will not regard him as a drunkard, an insolent and ignorant fellow (as
      he is regarded by the majority of official judges, who come from the
      bourgeois class, the class of property owners, and who almost always
      retain their connections with bourgeois society, with the factory owners,
      directors, and engineers, but are separated from the workers as by a
      Chinese Wall). Official judges are mostly concerned that matters should go
      smoothly on paper; as long as things look all right on paper, the
      government official does not worry about anything else—he is merely
      concerned with receiving his salary and pleasing those in higher
      authority. This accounts for the disgusting amount of red tape, protracted
      litigation, and pettifoggery—something has been incorrectly
      recorded, something did not get properly entered in the court record, and
      the case is lost, however just it may have been. When the judges are
      elected from among the employers and from among the workers, they have no
      need to pile up red tape, because they are not working for a salary and
      are not dependent on parasitic government officials. They are not
      concerned with getting a still better post, but with settling disputes
      that prevent the factory owners from continuing production uninterruptedly
      and workers from continuing their work in peace and with less fear of
      chicaneries and unjust vexations on the part of the
      employers. Furthermore, one has to know factory life well and from
      personal experience in order to be able to settle disputes between
      employers and workers. The official judge glances at the worker’s
      pay-book, reads the rules, and refuses to listen to anything
      else—you have broken the rules, he says, so you bear the
      responsibility, and the rest does not concern me. But judges elected from
      among the employers and from among the workers do not merely look at
      papers

      but at what happens in real life. It sometimes happens that a rule remains
      unchanged on paper, while in practice things proceed differently. Very
      often the official judge, even if he wants to, even if he examines cases
      with the greatest attention, cannot understand the point at issue, because
      he does not know the customs, he does not know the methods of fixing
      rates, he does not know the methods by which a master often cheats the
      worker without infringing the rules and the rates (as by transferring the
      worker to another job, by giving him different material, etc.). Elected
      judges who themselves work or who manage factory affairs have an immediate
      understanding of such issues, they can easily understand what exactly the
      worker wants, they are not concerned merely with observing the rules but
      with ensuring that the worker cannot be cheated by the bypassing of the
      rules, with ensuring that there can be no pretexts for deception and
      arbitrariness. There was a recent report in the newspapers that hat-makers
      had almost been convicted of theft, on a complaint from the employers, for
      making use of the waste trimmings from hats. Fortunately honest barristers
      were found who gathered information to prove that this was the custom in
      the industry and that the workers, far from being thieves, had not
      violated a single regulation. The ordinary, simple worker who earns very
      small wages can hardly ever get to a good barrister, and for this reason,
      as every worker knows, official judges often pass cruel, senselessly
      cruel, sentences in cases affecting workers. Absolute justice is never to
      be expected from official judges: we have said above that these judges
      belong to the bourgeois class and are prejudiced in advance to give
      credence to whatever the factory owner says and to disbelieve the words of
      the worker. The judge consults the law:

      a master and servant contract (one man hires himself out for wages to do
      something for another or to serve him). As far as he is concerned, it is
      all the same whether an engineer, a doctor, a factory director, or an
      unskilled labourer hires himself out to the factory owner; the judge
      thinks (by the dictates of his bureaucratic soul and his bourgeois
      stupidity) that the unskilled labourer should know his rights and be able,
      as well as a director, engineer, or doctor, to make stipulations in his
      contract for everything needed.But the judges in a factory court (half of the panel) are elected from
      among the workers, who know very well that a new worker, or a young
      worker, often feels in the factory or in the office as though he were in a
      dark forest and has not even the ghost of an idea that he is concluding a
      “free contract” and that he can “foresee” terms in
      that contract that are to his advantage. Let us take the following
      instance:

      a worker wants to register a complaint against unjust rejection of work or
      against fines. It is useless for him even to think of complaining to a
      judge or to a factory inspector, both of whom are government officials. An
      official will keep insisting on one thing: thelawgives the
      factory owner the right to fine workers and to reject bad work, so that it
      is for the factory owner to decide whether the work is bad and whether
      blame rests with the worker.That is why workers so rarely seek recourse to
      the courts: they put up with abuses, put up with them until finally they
      strike when their cup of patience runs over. With judges elected from
      their midst, the workers would find it incomparably easier to secure
      equity and protection in such cases and in regard to all petty factory
      disputes and insults. The wealthy official judge does not regard such
      petty matters as worthy of his attention (like having hot water for tea,
      or an extra cleaning of a machine, or similar items); but to the worker
      these things are by no means petty. Only the workers themselves can judge
      what a huge amount of gross ill-treatment, of insults, and of humiliation
      can be caused by what at first sight appear trifling, innocuous,
      inoffensive rules and regulations in the factory.

Thethird advantage workers stand to gain from factory courts is that in
      and through them workers learn to know the laws. As a rule the workers (in
      their mass) do not know and cannot get to know the laws, although
      government officials and official judges often punish them for not knowing
      the laws. When an official confronts a worker with the law and the worker
      pleads ignorance of its very existence, the official (or the judge) either
      laughs at him or rebukes him with the statement: “Ignorance of the
      law is no excuse,” as basic Russian legislation puts it. Any official and
      judge, therefore,assumesthat every worker knows the laws. But
      this assumption is a bourgeois lie, a lie invented by propertied

      people and by capitalists against the propertyless, the same sort of lie
      as the assumption that a worker concludes a “free contract”
      with the master. In actual fact, the worker who starts in at the factory
      at a tender age, when he has learned no more than to read and write (and
      very, very many have not even been able to learn to read and write!), has
      never had time to learn anything about laws, has had nobody to learn from,
      and, no doubt, has had no reason to learn—because if bourgeois
      officials apply the laws without asking him, the laws will not be of much
      benefit to the worker! The bourgeois classes that accuse the workers of
      ignorance of the laws have done absolutely nothing to help them acquire
      the knowledge, so that it is not so much the workers themselves who are
      to blame for their ignorance of the law as their exploiters (=those who
      plunder them), who own all the property, live by the labour of others and
      want to he the only ones to take advantage of education and
      knowledge. There is no school and there are no hooks that will give the
      workers a knowledge of the laws, because only very few workers can read
      books—very, very few among the millions of working people oppressed
      by capital. For the same reason there are very few who attend school, and
      even those who have had some schooling can, in most cases, only read,
      write, and count; this is too little for the understanding of a branch of
      knowledge as complicated and difficult as are the Russian laws. The
      workers will gain a knowledge of the laws only when they have to apply
      them themselves and hear and see justice done according to those
      laws. Workers could learn to know the laws better if, for instance, they
      were appointed to juries (with the factory owners required to pay them
      their regular wages for the days spent in court); but bourgeois society is
      so constructed that only people from the propertied classes may serve as
      jurymen (and also peasants who have been schooled in “social
      service,” i. e., in the lower ranks of the police); the propertyless, the
      proletarians, must submit to a court that is not theirs, while they
      themselves have no right to judge!  When factory courts are set up, the
      workers elect their own comrades as judges and the elections take place at
      regular intervals; in this way those elected from among the workers
      acquaint themselves with the laws by applying them in practice,that is, they not only read the laws as they are written in a book (for
      that does not by any means ensure a knowledge of the laws), but see for
      themselves in practice what particular laws are applicable to what cases
      and what their effect on the workers is. It is much easier for other
      workers, apart from the elected judges, to acquaint themselves with the
      laws through factory courts, because it is easy for a worker to speak to a
      judge elected from among his mates and obtain from him any necessary
      information Workers will visit a factory court more often than a court
      conducted by civil servants, because it is more accessible; they will
      listen to cases in which their relatives and friends are participating and
      in this way acquaint themselves with the laws. For a working man to
      understand in whose interests the laws are drawn up and in whose interests
      those who apply them act, it is important that he should become acquainted
      with the
      laws in practice and not merely from books. Once the worker is acquainted
      with the laws he will see quite clearly that the interests are those of
      the propertied class, the men of property, the capitalists, the
      bourgeoisie and that the working class will never win a sound and radical
      improvement n its conditions, so long as it does not win the right to
      elect its representatives to participate in the formulation of laws and in
      supervision over their fulfilment.

Furthermore(fourthly), a good aspect of factory courts is that they teach
      the workers to take an independent part in public, state affairs (because
      the court is a state institution and the activity of the court is a part
      of state activity), they teach the workers to elect the most intelligent
      and honest of their comrades, those who firmly support the workers’ cause,
      to post where their activities can be seen by the whole working class,
      where workers’ representatives can declare the needs and demands of all
      the workers. It is to the interest of the capitalist class, of the entire
      bourgeoisie, to keep the workers ignorant and isolated, to remove as
      quickly as possible those among them who are more intelligent and who
      make use of their intellect and knowledge, not to become traitors to their
      class and to fawn on the foremen, masters, and police, but to help other
      workers acquire greater knowledge and to learn to stand up jointly for the
      working-class cause. But in order that such advanced representatives,of whom that cause has great need, should come to be known by all workers
      and win their trust, it is important that all should witness their
      activities, that all should know whether they are capable of expressing
      and upholding the real needs and desires of the workers. If the workers
      could elect such people as judges, the best of them would be known to
      all, they would gain wider trust, and the proletarian cause would win by
      it greatly. If we look at our landowners, industrialists, and merchants,
      we see that they are not content with the fact that each of them is able
      to go to a governor or to a minister and present his requests; they also
      make sure of having their representatives in the courts (the courts with
      representatives from the social-estates) and that these participate
      directly in the administration (e.g., Marshals of the

      Nobility,[2]school inspectors, etc., are elected by the
      nobility; members of factory affairs

      boards,[3]of stock-exchange and fair committees are elected by
      the merchants, etc.). The working class in Russia is without any
      rights at all; workers are regarded as draught animals that have to
      toil for others and hold their tongues, that never dare to state
      their needs and desires. If the workers were to elect their comrades
      to factory courts constantly, they would have at least some
      possibility of participating in public affairs and of stating, not
      only the opinions of individual

      workers—of Pyotr, Sidor, or Ivan—but

      also of stating the opinions and demands of all the workers. In that case
      the workers would not be so mistrustful of the courts as they are of those
      conducted by government officials; they would see their comrades there,
      those who would intercede for them.

Further(fifthly), the factory courts are of benefit to the workers
      because they would give greater publicity to factory affairs and to all
      incidents in factory life. We see today that the factory owners and the
      government are doing every thing in their power to conceal what is
      happening in the factory world from the general public; it is forbidden to
      publish anything about strikes, the reports of factory inspectors on the
      condition of the workers are no longer being printed, an effort is being
      made to have all abuses passed in silence and get matters settled as
      quickly as possible “in camera,” by government officials,
      and all workers’meetings are prohibited. It is not surprising that the mass of the workers
      frequently has very little knowledge of what is going on in other
      factories or even in other departments of the same factory. Factory
      courts, to which workers could frequently appeal, which would be held in
      public, i.e., in the presence of a working—class public, in
      non-working hours, would benefit the workers by helping to make known all
      abuses and would thus facilitate their struggle against various factory
      outrages and accustom them to think, not only of the regime at their own
      factory, but of the regime at all factories, of the conditions of all

      workers.[1]

Finally,there is one other benefit accruing from factory courts that must
      be mentioned: they get factory owners, directors, and foremen into the
      habit of treating workers decently, of treating them as equal citizens and
      not as slaves. Every worker knows that factory owners and foremen all too
      often permit themselves to treat workers in a disgracefully insulting
      manner, to rail at them, etc. It is difficult for a worker to complain
      against this attitude; it can be rebuffed only when the workers are
      sufficiently developed and are able to give support to their comrade. The
      factory owners and foremen say that our workers are very ignorant and
      coarse, for which reason they have to be treated roughly. There are still
      many survivals, actually, of serfdom among our workers, there is little
      education and much uncouthness—this cannot be denied. But who is
      mostly to blame for this? It is precisely the factory owners, foremen, and
      government officials who are to blame, they, whose attitude to the workers
      is that of feudal lords towards serfs,they, who do not want to consider the worker as an equal. If workers make
      a request or ask a question civilly, they are everywhere met with
      rudeness, with oaths and threats. Is it not obvious that when factory
      owners blame the workers for their rudeness under these circumstances they
      are placing the blame on the wrong shoulders? Factory courts would
      speedily wean our exploiters of their insulting manner: there would be
      worker judges in the court side by side with the factory owners, and they
      would discuss cases and vote together. The factory-owner judges would have
      to regard the worker judges as their equals and not as their hired
      servants. The contestants and witnesses in court would come from the
      factory owners and the workers, and the former would get their training
      in addressing workers civilly. This is very important to the workers, in
      view of the fact that at present discussions of this sort are extremely
      rare:

      the factory owner refuses to recognise delegates elected by the workers,
      so that the latter have only one way open to them—to strike, a
      difficult and often a very burdensome way. Further, if there were also
      workers among the judges, workers would be able to appeal freely to the
      court against rough treatment. Worker judges would always be on their
      side, and if a factory owner or a master were summoned to court for
      insulting behaviour, he would lose all desire to display his arrogance and
      insolence.

Factorycourts consisting of representatives of masters and workers in
      equal numbers, therefore, would have great significance for the workers
      and would bring them many benefits. They would be more accessible to the
      workers than the ordinary courts, there would be less pettifoggery and red
      tape, the judges would have a better knowledge of the factory conditions,
      and would judge more fairly; they would acquaint the workers with the
      laws, they would teach the workers to elect their representatives and to
      participate in state affairs, they would give greater publicity to factory
      life and to the working-class movement, and they would accustom the
      factory owners to treat the workers decently, to have polite dealings with
      them as equals with equals. It is no matter for wonder, therefore, that
      the workers in all European countries demand the establishment of factory
      courts, that they demand that these courts should beset up, not only for factory workers (which the Germans and the French
      already have), but also for workers engaged in home-work for capitalists
      (for handicraftsmen), as well as for agricultural labourers. No officials
      appointed by the government (no judges and no factory inspectors)
      caneverreplace institutions in which theworkers
      themselves participate: after what has been said above, this requires
      no further explanation. Every worker, furthermore, knows from his own
      experience what he has to expect from government officials; if he is told
      that government officials can he concerned with the workers’ welfare
      equally with people elected from among the workers themselves, he knows
      it to be a lie and a deception. Deception of this sort is of great
      advantage to the government that wants the workers to remain the ignorant,
      rightless, and inarticulate slaves of the capitalists, and for this reason
      one often hears these lying assertions from government officials or from
      writers who defend the interests of the factory owners and the government.

Theneed for factory courts and the benefits they could bring the workers
      are so obvious that they were long ago recognisedeven by Russian
      government officials.True, it was so long ago that many have
      forgotten it! It was at the time when our peasants were liberated from
      serf dependence (in 1861, over 38 years ago). About that time the Russian
      Government decided also to replace the laws governing artisans and factory
      workers with new ones; it was all too obvious then that the old laws for
      workers could not remain when the peasants had been liberated, since many
      of the workers had been serfs when the old laws were drawn up. And so the
      government appointed a commission of several officials to study the
      factory laws of France and Germany (and of other countries) and to draft a
      bill to change the Russian laws for artisans and factory workers. The
      commission included some very important people. Nevertheless, they got
      down to the task and printed five tomes in which they outlined foreign
      laws and proposed a new law for Russia. This new law, proposed by the
      commission,was to institute factory courts with the judges elected
      from among the factory owners and the workers in equal numbers. The
      draft was print ed in 1865, that is, thirty-four years ago. But what, theworker will ask, happened to this draft law? Why did not the government,
      which had itself instructed the officials to draft a law on the necessary
      changes, introduce factory courts in Russia?.

Ourgovernment dealt with the commission’s draft in the same manner in
      which it deals with any draft laws that are in any way of benefit to the
      people and to the workers. The officials were rewarded for their labours
      for the good of the tsar and the fatherland; they were given decorations
      to hang from ribbons round their necks and accorded higher ranks and more
      lucrative posts. And the draft law they had prepared was quietly
      “pigeon-holed,” as they say in offices. And so this draft law is
      still stacked away in its pigeon-hole. The government has even stopped
      thinking of according the workers the right to elect comrades from their
      midst to factory courts.

Itcannot, however, be said that the government has not once thought about
      the workers since that time. True, it has not thought of them of its own
      free will, but only when forced to do so by menacing workers’ unrest and
      strikes; nevertheless, it has thought of them. It has published laws
      prohibiting child labour in factories, prohibiting night-work for women in
      certain industries, reducing the working day, and appointing factory
      inspectors. Despite all the pettifoggery employed in drafting them,
      despite the numerous loopholes left open for the factory owners to violate
      and get round them, these laws have still been of some benefit. Why, then,
      does the government prefer introducing new laws and new
      officials—factory inspectors—instead of introducing factory
      courts, provided for by a law that has been fully elaborated? The reason
      for this is very obvious and the workers must fully understand it, for
      this example will make clear the entire policy of the Russian Government
      with respect to the working class.

Thegovernment has appointed new officials instead of factory courts,
      because factory courts would raise the level of the workers’
      class-consciousness; make them more conscious of their rights, of their
      human and civic dignity; teach them to think independently about state
      affairs and about the interests of the entire working class; teach them to
      elect their more developed comrades to represent them,and in this way undermine, if only in part, the undivided authority
      assumed by government officials. This is what the government fears more
      than anything else. It is even prepared to dispense a few hand-outs to the
      workers (only mites, of course, and only with one hand that does the
      giving ceremonially in full view of the public, so that it may pose as a
      benefactor, while taking them away slyly and gradually with the other
      hand! The workers now know this trick, having had a sample of it in the
      factory law of June 2, 18971)—it is prepared to dole out crumbs as
      long as the autocratic power of the bureaucracy is left untouched and
      there is no awakening of the workers’ class-consciousness, no development
      of their independence. The government can easily avoid this terrible
      danger by appointing new officials, since officials are the humble
      servants of the government. It is no trouble to forbid officials (factory
      inspectors, for instance) to publish their reports, it is no trouble to
      forbid them to talk to the workers regarding their rights and regarding
      the abuses of the masters, it is no trouble to turn them into factory
      police sergeants and to order them to report to the police all
      dissatisfaction and unrest on the part of the workers.

Therefore,so long as the present political system remains in
      Russia—i.e., denial of rights to the people, lawless actions on the
      part of government officials and the police, who are not answerable to the
      people—the workers cannot expect the introduction of factory courts
      which can be of benefit to them. The government understands full well that
      factory courts would very speedily cause the workers to go over to more
      radical demands. Having elected their representatives to the factory
      courts, the workers would soon realise the insufficiency of this step,
      because the factory owners and landlords who exploit them send their
      representatives to very many state institutions at a much higher level;
      the workers would certainly demand a general all-people’s
      representation. Having once secured court publicity for factory affairs
      and the workers’ needs, they would soon see that this is not enough,
      because in our day real publicity can be obtained only through newspapers
      and popular meetings, so that the workers would demand freedom of
      assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.This is why the government has buried the draft law to introduce
	factory courts in Russia!

Onthe other hand, let us assume for a moment that the government were
      deliberately, with deception of the workers in mind, to introduce factory
      courts today and to retain the present political system intact. Would this
      be of any benefit to the workers? It would bring them no benefits at all:
      the workers would not even elect to these courts the most class-conscious
      and most loyal of their comrades, those who are most devoted to the cause
      of the working class, knowing that in Russia for every straightforward and
      honest word a man may be seized simply by order of the police and thrown
      into prison or transported to Siberia without trial!

Itfollows, therefore, that the demand for factory courts with judges
      elected from among the workers is only one small part of a wider and more
      radical demand: the demand for political rights for the people, i.e., the
      right to participate in the administration of the state and the right to
      make known the needs of the people openly, not only in the press, but also
      at popular meetings.

[1]It must, of course, be remembered that factory courts can be only one of
      the ways and means of publicity, and not even the chief means. The life in
      factories, the conditions of the workers and their struggle can be brought
      to public knowledge in a real and comprehensive manner only by a free
      working-class press and by free meetings of the people to discuss all
      state affairs. Similarly, workers’ representation at factory courts is
      only one of the means of representation and is far from being the chief
      means. The real representation of the workers’ needs and interests is
      possible only through a national representative assembly (a parliament)
      that would promulgate laws and supervise their execution. Below we shall
      deal with the question as to whether factory courts are possible under the
      conditions now obtaining in Russia.
    —Lenin

[2]Marshal of the Nobility—in tsarist Russia, the elected
      representative of the nobility of a gubernia or uyezd. The Marshal of the
      Nobility was in charge of all the affairs o the nobility; he occupied an
      influential position in the administration and took the chair at meetings
      of the Zemstvo.

[3]Factory affairs boards—bodies supervising factory affairs
      in tsarist Russia. As a rule, the boards consisted of the provincial
      governor, the public prosecutor, the chief of the police administration,
      the factory inspector, and two factory owners.